Hart was born in Ottawa, Kansas, the son of Nina (née Pritchard) and Carl Riley Hartpence, a farm equipment salesman.[1] As a young man, he worked as a laborer on the railroad. He and his father changed their last name to "Hart" in 1961 because "Hart is a lot easier to remember than Hartpence."[2] He won a scholarship to Bethany Nazarene College in Bethany, Oklahoma, in 1954[2] and graduated in 1958. He met his wife Oletha (Lee) Ludwig there, and they married in 1958. He also graduated from Yale Divinity School in 1961 and Yale Law School in 1964.[3]

Hart occasionally calls himself the inventor of the Iowa caucuses.[citation needed] Following the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, U.S. Senator George McGovern of South Dakota co-chaired a commission that revised the Democratic presidential nomination structure. The new structure weakened the influence of such old-style party bosses as Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley, who were once able to hand pick national convention delegates and dictate the way they voted. The new rules made caucuses a process in which relative newcomers could participate without paying dues to established party organizations.

In the 1972 primary elections, McGovern named Hart his campaign manager. Along with Rick Stearns, an expert on the new system, they decided on a strategy to focus on the 28 states holding caucuses instead of primary elections. They felt the nature of the caucuses made them easier (and less costly) to win if they targeted their efforts.[4] While their primary election strategy proved successful in winning the nomination, McGovern would go on to lose the 1972 presidential election in one of the most lopsided elections in US history.

In 1974, Hart ran for the United States Senate, challenging two-term incumbent Republican Peter Dominick. Hart was aided by the state's trend towards Democrats during the early 1970s, as well as Dominick's continued support for the unpopular President Richard Nixon and concerns about the Senator's age and health. In the general election, Hart won by a wide margin (57.2% to Dominick's 39.5%) and was immediately labeled a rising star. He got a seat on the Armed Services Committee, and was an early supporter of reforming the bidding for military contracts, as well as an advocate for the military using smaller, more mobile weapons and equipment, as opposed to the traditional large scale items. He also served on the Environment and Public Work Committee and the Senate Intelligence Committee. From 1975 to '76, Hart was a member of a subcommittee under the "Church Committee" that looked into to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Hart served as the chairman of Senate Subcommittee on Nuclear Regulation. He flew over the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania in an army helicopter several times with minority member Alan K. Simpson during a nuclear accident there,[5] and led the subsequent Senate investigation into the accident.[6]

In 1980, he sought a second term. In something of a surprise, his Republican opponent was Colorado Secretary of State Mary Estill Buchanan, a moderate candidate who narrowly defeated the more conservative choice, Howard "Bo" Callaway, in the party primary, by less than 2,000 primary votes. Fourteen years earlier, Callaway had been the Republican gubernatorial nominee in his native Georgia. Callaway had in the early 1970s bought and run an elegant resort in Crested Butte. Buchanan had hit Hart hard for supporting the Panama Canal Treaties and for backing Jimmy Carter in 80% of his Senate votes. Buchanan charged in a campaign ad about Hart: "He votes one way and talks another when he is back here. He is a liberal, McGovernite carpetbagger." Hart responded that Buchanan's charges reflect her narrow viewpoint and insists that his campaign will rise above partisanship. Said Hart in a campaign ad: "I will not ignore her. We will interact and debate, but I am going to run a campaign for the 1980s. What is her plan for the environment? For national defense? For the economy? It took me a year or so to formulate my ideas."[7]

In the end, Hart survived 50.2%-49.8% of the vote.

Hart cosponsored the Semiconductor Chip Protection Act of 1984 with Senator Charles Mathias which was signed into law. The Chip Act created a new category of intellectual property rights for mask works for computer chips that protected silicon valley from cheap foreign imitations.[8] Similar legislation had been proposed in every Congress since 1979.[8] It led to Hart being called the leader of the "Atari Democrats".

Conservative Republican Senator Barry Goldwater remarked of Hart, "You can disagree with him politically, but I have never met a man who is more honest and more moral."[2]

Hart, like Walter Mondale and Jesse Jackson, was pro-choice on the issue of abortion.[9]

In February 1983, during his second term, Hart announced his candidacy for president in the 1984 presidential election. At the time of his announcement, Hart was a little-known senator and barely received above one percent in the polls against better-known candidates such as Walter Mondale, John Glenn, and Jesse Jackson. To counter this situation, Hart started campaigning early in New Hampshire, making a then-unprecedented canvassing tour in late September, months before the primary. This strategy attracted national media attention to his campaign, and by late 1983, he had risen moderately in the polls to the middle of the field, mostly at the expense of the sinking candidacies of Glenn and Alan Cranston. Mondale won the Iowa caucus in late January, but Hart polled a respectable 16 percent. Two weeks later, in the New Hampshire primary, he shocked much of the party establishment and the media by defeating Mondale by 10 percentage points. Hart instantly became the main challenger to Mondale for the nomination, and appeared to have the momentum on his side.

Hart's media campaign was produced by Raymond Strother, a native Texan who had begun his career in Louisiana.[10] Hart could not overcome Mondale's financial and organizational advantages, especially among labor union leaders in the Midwest and industrial Northeast. Hart was chronically in debt, to a final count of $4.75 million.[11] In states like Illinois, where delegates were elected directly by primary voters, Hart often had incomplete delegate slates. Hart's ideas were criticized as too vague and centrist by many Democrats. Shortly after he became the new frontrunner, it was revealed that Hart had changed his last name, had often listed 1937 instead of 1936 as his birth date, and had changed his signature several times. This, along with two separations from his wife, Lee, caused some to question Hart's "flake factor". Nonetheless, he and his wife have remained married for over 50 years.

The two men swapped victories in the primaries, with Hart getting exposure as a candidate with "new ideas" and Mondale rallying the party establishment to his side.[12] The two men fought to a draw in the Super Tuesday, with Hart winning states in the West, Florida, and New England. Mondale fought back and began ridiculing Hart's campaign platform. The most famous television moment of the campaign was during a debate when he mocked Hart's "new ideas" by quoting a line from a popular Wendy'stelevision commercial at the time: "Where's the beef?" Hart's campaign could not effectively counter this remark, and when he ran negative TV commercials against Mondale in the Illinois primary, his appeal as a new kind of Democrat never entirely recovered. Hart lost the New York and Pennsylvania primaries, but won those of Ohio and Indiana.

Mondale gradually pulled away from Hart in the delegate count, but the race was not decided until June, on "Super Tuesday III".[13] Decided that day were delegates from five states: South Dakota, New Mexico, West Virginia, California and New Jersey.[14] The proportional nature of delegate selection meant that Mondale was likely to obtain enough delegates on that day to secure the stated support of an overall majority of delegates, and hence the nomination, no matter who actually "won" the states contested. However, Hart maintained that unpledged superdelegates that had previously claimed support for Mondale would shift to his side if he swept the Super Tuesday III primary.[15] Once again, Hart committed a faux pas, insulting New Jersey shortly before the primary day. Campaigning in California, he remarked that while the "bad news" was that he and his wife Lee had to campaign separately, "[t]he good news for her is that she campaigns in California while I campaign in New Jersey." Compounding the problem, when his wife interjected that she "got to hold a koala bear", Hart replied that "I won't tell you what I got to hold: samples from a toxic waste dump."[15] While Hart won California, he lost New Jersey after leading in polls by as much as 15 points.

By the time the final primaries concluded, Mondale had a considerable lead in total delegates, though he was 40 delegates short of clinching victory. Superdelegates voted overwhelmingly for Mondale at the Democratic National Convention in San Francisco on July 16, making him the presidential nominee. Hart, already aware that the nomination was all but Mondale's after the final primaries, lobbied for the Vice Presidential slot on the ticket, claiming that he would do better than Mondale against President Ronald Reagan (an argument undercut by a June 1984 Gallup poll that showed both men nine points behind the president). While Hart was given serious consideration, Mondale chose Geraldine Ferraro instead.

Nonetheless, this race for the nomination was the most recent occasion that a major party presidential nomination has gone all the way to the convention. Mondale was later defeated in a landslide by the incumbent Reagan, winning only his home state of Minnesota and the District of Columbia. Many felt that Hart and other similar candidates, younger and more independent-minded, represented the future of the party. Hart had refused to take money from Political Action Committees (PACs), as a result he mortgaged his house to self-finance his campaign, and was over $1 million in debt at the end of the campaign.

Gary Hart at the 1984 Democratic National Convention in San Francisco.

Hart declined to run for re-election to the Senate, leaving office when his second term expired with the intent of running for president again. After Mario Cuomo withdrew from the race in February 1987, Hart was the clear frontrunner for the Democratic nomination in the 1988 election.[16][17]

Hart officially declared his candidacy on April 13, 1987.[18] When Lois Romano, a reporter for the The Washington Post, asked Hart to respond to rumors spread by other campaigns that he was a "womanizer", Hart responded that such candidates were "not going to win that way, because you don't get to the top by tearing someone else down".[19] The New York Post reported that comment front page with the headline lead-in "Straight from the Hart", followed below with big, black block letters: "GARY: I'M NO WOMANIZER.'", and then a summary of the story: "Dem blasts rivals over sex life rumors."[19][20]:86

In late April, 1987, an anonymous informant[A] contacted The Miami Herald and told the paper that Hart was having an affair, provided details about the affair, and told the Herald that Hart was going to meet his lover at his Washington DC townhouse the next Friday, May 1.[21][22]:28 As a result, a team of Herald reporters staked out the townhouse that evening and the next Saturday, and observed a young woman and Gary Hart together.[23] The Herald reporters confronted Hart on Saturday evening in an alley; he denied that he was having an affair.[21][23]

The Herald published a story on May 3 that Hart had spent Friday night and most of Saturday with a young woman whom he had invited to stay with him. On that same day, in an interview that appeared in the New York Times, Hart, responding to the rumors of his womanizing: was quoted: "Follow me around. I don't care. I'm serious. If anybody wants to put a tail on me, go ahead. They'll be very bored."[24] The Herald's reporters knew that the New York Times was going to feature the story with the quote on Sunday, and the two articles appearing on the same day ignited a political firestorm.[21] On Sunday, Hart's campaign denied any scandal and condemned the Herald's reporters for their intrusive reporting.[25]

The next day, Monday, the young woman was identified as Donna Rice, and she gave a press conference also denying an affair.[26]

The scandal spread rapidly through the national media, as did another damaging story about angry creditors of the $1.3 million in debt Hart had incurred in prior campaigns.[26] Questions about the affair came to dominate Hart's campaign appearances.[26]

On May 8, 1987, a week after the story broke, Hart suspended his campaign after the Washington Post threatened to run a story about a woman Hart had dated while separated from his wife,[B] and his wife and daughter became similar subjects of interest for tabloid newspapers.[26]

At a press conference, he lashed out at the media, saying "I said that I bend, but I don't break, and believe me, I'm not broken." Hart warned, "I tremble for my country when I think we may, in fact, get the kind of leaders we deserve."[26] A Gallup Poll found that nearly two-thirds (64 percent) of the U.S. respondents it surveyed thought the media treatment of Hart was "unfair." A little over half (53 percent) responded that marital infidelity had little to do with a president's ability to govern.[26]

To many observers, the press conference was redolent of Richard Nixon's "Last Press Conference" of November 7, 1962, in which Nixon blamed the media for his loss in the 1962 California gubernatorial election and did not take responsibility for his own actions.[28][29][30] Hart, in fact, received a letter from Nixon himself commending him for "handling a very difficult situation uncommonly well".[28] The unprecedented nature of the investigation and reporting on Hart's personal life was widely noted and reported at the time;[21] the New York Times said "the system had gone out of control."[26]

Having withdrawn from the presidential race, Hart left for Ireland to spend time away from the media with his son. He rented a cottage in Oughterard, though remained in contact with key members of his team. What news did filter out was that he was not excluding a return to the race.[31]The New York Times also pointed to his odd ambivalence towards the presidency even before being caught by "the system": "Only half of me wants to be President [...] The other half wants to go write novels in Ireland. But the 50 percent that wants to be President is better than 100 percent of the others."[26]

His campaign chair, Colorado congresswoman Patricia Schroeder, jumped into the race following Hart's withdrawal, but soon after withdrew herself at an emotional press conference on September 28, 1987.[32]

In December 1987, Hart returned to the race, declaring on the steps of New Hampshire Statehouse, "Let's let the people decide!"[33][34] Hart stated that the other candidates did not represent his new ideas of strategic investment economics, military reform, and "enlightened engagement in foreign policy".[34] Hart warned, "We could lose more young Americans unnecessarily in the Persian Gulf."[34] He initially rose to the top of the polls nationally, and second behind Massachusetts governor Mike Dukakis in New Hampshire,[35] but was soon confronted with more negative stories about prior debts from his 1984 campaign.[36][37] He competed in the New Hampshire primary and received 4,888 votes, approximately four percent.[38] After the Super Tuesday contests on March 8 in which he won no more than 5% of the vote, he withdrew from the campaign a second time.[39]

Hart gave a speech before the American international law firm Coudert Brothers on September 4, 2001, exactly one week before the September 11 attacks, warning that within the next 25 years a terrorist attack would lead to mass deaths in the U.S. Hart met with aviation executives in Montreal, Canada, on September 5, 2001 to warn of airborne terrorist attacks. The Montreal Gazette reported the story the following day with a headline, “Thousands Will Die, Ex-Presidential Hopeful Says.”[41] On September 6, 2001, Hart met with National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice to urge, "You must move more quickly on homeland security. An attack is going to happen."[42] In a subsequent interview with Salon.com, Hart accused President George W. Bush and other administration officials of ignoring his warnings.[40]

In late 2002, urged by former Oxford classmates, Hart began testing the waters for another run for the presidency, launching a website at GaryHartNews.com and a related speaking tour to gauge reactions from the public. He started his own blog in the spring of 2003, the first prospective presidential candidate to do so. After a few months of speaking, Hart decided not to run for president and instead endorsed Democrat John Kerry. According to an October 23, 2004, National Journal article and later reports in the Washington Post, Hart was mentioned as a probable Cabinet appointment if Kerry won the presidency. He was considered a top candidate for either Director of National Intelligence, Secretary of Homeland Security, or Secretary of Defense.

Since May 2005 he has been a contributing blogger at The Huffington Post. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations (better known as the CFR). Hart also sits on the Advisory Board of Operation USA, a Los Angeles-based international relief and development agency. It was announced in January 2006 that Hart will hold an endowed professorship at the University of Colorado. He is the author of James Monroe, part of the Times Books series on American presidents published in October 2005. Hart is an Honorary Fellow of the Literary & Historical Society of University College Dublin. He is an Advisory Board member for the Partnership for a Secure America, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to recreating the bipartisan center in American national security and foreign policy.

In September 2007, The Huffington Post published Hart's letter, "Unsolicited Advice to the Government of Iran", in which he stated that "Provocation is no longer required to take America to war" and warns Iran that "for the next sixteen months or so, you should not only not take provocative actions, you should not seem to be doing so." He went on to suggest that the Bush-Cheney administration was waiting for an opportunity to attack Iran, writing: "Don't give a certain vice president we know the justification he is seeking to attack your country."[43]

Hart linked American energy policy with national security in an essay published in November 2007.[44] Hart wrote, "In fact, we do have an energy policy: It’s to continue to import more than half our oil and sacrifice American lives so we can drive our Humvees. This is our current policy, and it is massively immoral." Hart currently sits on the board of directors for the Energy Literacy Advocates. He founded the American Security Project in 2007[45] and he started a new blog in 2009.[46]

In a third season episode of the television sitcom The Golden Girls, when Rose Nylund (Betty White), dressed in a robe and slippers, is asked what she does for a job, her roommate Dorothy (Beatrice Arthur) responds, "She's Gary Hart's campaign manager – it doesn't pay much, but you don't have to get out of bed to do it."

Chilean folk rock band Sexual Democracia's song "Don't Cry, Gary Hart", a cueca sung in English, narrates the scandal during the 1988 Presidential Campaign. It appears on their album Buscando Chilenos 2 (1992).

Crosby, Still, Nash and Young released a video satirizing the events of the Miami Herald's stake-out of Hart's home, and other events of 1987, in American Dream (Neil Young, 1988). [2]

^Dana Weems, who at the time the call was made, was a recent acquaintance of Donna Rice, admitted in a 2014 article that she had been the caller. She denied it at the time.[21]

^On December 20, 1986, Hart was allegedly followed by an anonymous private investigator from a radio station where Hart had given the Democratic Party's response to President Reagan's weekly radio address. That alleged PI file reported that Hart had been followed to a woman's house, photographed there, and left sometime the following morning.[27]

^Nuclear accident and recovery at Three Mile Island : a report / prepared by the Subcommittee on Nuclear Regulation for the Committee on Environment and Public Works, U.S. Senate, Washington: U.S. G.P.O.(1980)